The Spirit - Steven Sommers, maybe?  There needs to be a sense of FUN yet still make it serious adventure

The Spirit's been to the well twice now to little good effect. Oddly, based upon Sin City's fidelity to the material and the "lone guy getting his head handed to him going up against the bad guys" theme of that film, Frank Miller would have been on my short list of people who should tackle a Spirit movie, in some capacity. I wouldn't have cast him as director. Sadly, Miller's intent to fix things that were in no danger of breaking and his increasing turn towards parodist absurdism as straight fiction made that one of the most painful cinematic experiences to which I've ever subjected myself. Awful, awful film...

So... Howard, then! Years and years ago, Comics Scene magazine had a short article about the HTD film in the pipeline at that time and even included a small picture of a Howard maquette the film-makers had made. Howard was to be played by the to-date most complicated marionette ever made for film. Man, I would loved to have seen that movie...!

A earlier draft of the Steve Gerber screenplay (there must be one in existence somewhere), perhaps with a Mark Millar polish (hey, I'm not thrilled at the prospect, but the guy can apparently get films made) and direction from the Coen Brothers. If they'll remake True Grit, they'll remake this. Send Howard into the seedy streets of Chicago and let him wander around at night, meeting crackpot mystics and their half-naked daughters, kidney ladies, and bizarre space-turnip worshippers. Have him run into Bev on the run from her psycho wanna-be super-villain ex-boyfriend, and become a prisoner inside his insane laboratory along with a dozen homeless types. Watch Howard's disgust as Bev agrees to marry the creep to save them all. Hey, the guy is rich after all, right? Watch Howard's ever-increasing outrage at finding that every single hairless ape on this nutjob planet is damaged goods. Waauuuughh!!!

We need taglines! "Get your hands offa me, you damned hairless ape!" ... or maybe...
"You will believe a duck can't fly."